Updates to TV Series Full Cast & Crew pages

As Col referenced in his post earlier this week, we're pleased to announce that we've added episodic information to the Series Cast section of the TV Series Full Cast & Crew page. This means that TV Series Full Cast & Crew is now a one-stop shop that not only provides the number of episodes in which a given actor / actress appeared, but also shows the exact episodes in which the actor / actress appeared (with links to the episodes). You can access the data by clicking on the down arrows to the right of the years (see screenshot below).

You can access the particular's episode's full cast by clicking on a particular episode's link. For example, clicking on the "Wrap Around the Clock" Family Ties episode for Micheal J. Fox will take you to the episode's page, which shows the entire cast for the episode.

As part of this enhancement, early next week, we’re eliminating the old Episode Cast page. If you had an Episode Cast page bookmarked, upon using your bookmark, you’ll automatically be redirected to the corresponding Full Cast & Crew page.

As Col referenced in his posting earlier this week, we're pleased to announce that we've added episodic information to the Series Cast section of the TV Series Full Cast & Crew page... Leonard, Official RepJoined on May 8, 2017 https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/people/leonard_david- - -

Another recently launched benefit from this is you can now click the number of episodes on the title main details and full cast pages of any TV-show to show exactly in which episodes the person appeared directly on the page.For example, from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4574334/ (by clicking "9 episodes"):14 hours ago by Col Needham, Official Rep

what catastrophic news that you have removed the abiltity to see all the cast of all the episodes in one place using the epcast page. this has been an essential tool for me to check for vandalism to episides of the various titles that i regularly contribute to - such as the time that someone deleted all the credits for an actor and my saved epcast pages for various titles were useful in resubmitting the vandalised data.

i despair of IMDB sometimes. only ever ADD features. never DELETE them.

I agree this is a travesty. Over the years I collected scores of bookmarks to epcast pages to favorite or otherwise of interest shows. All that effort wasted. I don't approach the cast info from the POV described above in so-called enhancement. I want to see all episodes of the series, including cast, on one page so I can search by episode title. This stinks! I want to approach it by episode, not actor.

Unfortunately, IMDB doesn't care about us. This is proven by their lack of response here and failure to reinstate a perfectly good page that was already created for thousands of shows. I used to praise and recommend the site to others frequently. Not anymore.

Actually, a while back someone from IMDB got us all excited because he said the page was coming back and he was working on it. It turned out he responded to the wrong thread with his update so it didn't apply to this situation, so IMDB is aware and I suspect has been from the beginning.

This is ridiculous. How does adding additional steps to view information improve the user experience? Hands down, this is the worst change to IMDB in memory. I sincerely hope you will reconsider this infuriating revision. There are very few alternatives out there, but this is enough to send me looking for one.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. a terrible decision. Please IMDB staff stop tinkering and meddling. by all means add new features but leave existing features untouched for those of us who rely on them.

I do not like this change. As I often watch shows with multiple (read: 8 or more) seasons, I LOVED the ep cast page due to the addition of the brief synopses of each episode. It made figuring out a specific episode I may be thinking of much easier, than having to search in each individual season. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE revert back!

The old way also made it easier when I could remember the name of an episode but not where it falls in the lineup of the series.

Exactly! Not to mention that in the old system if you were trying to identify an actor in a particular episode the information was right there. Now I need to know the actor to try to find the episode. It defeats the whole purpose of the thing. It's beyond ridiculous.

It is insane that this feature has changed like this. Extra steps and needing to know beforehand what you used to browse for is just, respectfully, amateurish and sloppy. Who made up the specs? What useability, if any, was tested? Who, if anybody, in the user community did you ask? IMDB is not a new, small, underfunded entity. Amazon learns a lot from us as we use the app. and researching data to take advantage of Prime has been made tortuous.

I'm sure the list of actors, with drop-down links to all their episodes, is very useful for some people. Fine. You've created a new feature.

But for heaven's sake don't remove old features like the list *in credits order* of all the cast for all the episodes. It's a convenient single place that lists everything. And as I said earlier, it makes it very easy to see in any of the cast members in any of the episodes have been removed/altered, accidentally or maliciously.

Can you please restore the episode cast page, and also adopt a policy of "only ever add features, NEVER remove features".

The other thing I like about the epcast page is when I only catch a glimpse of an episode, and use a character name to figure out what episode I'm watching. Ctrl-F on that page is a god-send. Please! bring it back! I use it almost daily!

The episode cast page was one of the most useful pages on your site. Please bring it back! It is beyond annoying if I have to click through every episode page of a TV show to get this information now, especially if it ran for more than one season. A long list with every actor that ever appeared in it is completely useless, if it is not grouped by episode!

I went back and tried to find the information that used to be on the "episodes cast" page another way, but it is just not possible with the full list. For example, I just bought the season 7 DVD set of "Blue Bloods", and I tried to find the actors involved in season 7. On this particular show, there are over 2500 actors listed, but there is no discernible order to those names. The 2400 actors that only appeared once are neither listed alphabetically, nor are they in chronological order. I haven't found a way to change that either. There is also no "expand all" feature, to see the episodes all those actors appeared in at once, and I don't plan on doing that for all 2500 actors. All that's left is to go through episode by episode, but to see all actors, you have to go to the full list for all epsiodes, and on the full list page there is no "next" button. Meaning I have to go back to the main page, which adds up to 3 mouse clicks per episode, 66 clicks for the 22 season seven episode, for information I used to get with about 3 or 4 clicks. Since I guess that your ad-customers pay by number of views, this is probably getting you way more money, but it certainly doesn't make the lives of us lowly "users" easier.

It feels like a throw-back, because many, many years ago, actors used to be added to the show's main page, rather than episodes, and the result was the same as now: long lists of actors with no easy way of finding out when they actually appeared. It was just a mess of not very useful data.

Since I don't think the episodes cast feature will be back, you might at least think about doing the same sort of display for the crew as well. I, for one, am more likely to look for all the episodes a certain director was involved in, than any of the hundreds of bit players listed. And secondly, it would also improve if not only the episode title, but also the season & episode number were displayed. I doubt that anyone has memorized all the episode titles for a show, whereas the season and episode numbers give you at least a rough idea.

Also, for anyone who misses this page as much as I do: the Internat Archive has a Wayback Machine that stores almost every internet page that ever was. For older shows you still can find the episodes cast pages there. Doesn't work for new shows, or new seasons; and it might not have the most up to date data; but that probably doesn't matter all that much for old shows or seasons.

I've already tried it and unfortunately, as of now, there's nothing there. Maybe it's because of the automatic redirect or maybe it hasn't been down long enough. I've closed out the IMDB page that I've relied upon for years. IMDB is becoming useless to me now.

One more thing: Don't know if this carries any weight at all, but since this help-user doesn't link back to my imdb-account: I have been a imdb-member for 16 years now, with way over 10,000 contributions (username "argusauge"), and I'd really like that epcast page back. Please, please, please!?!

Removing the episode cast page is not an "enhancement" as you strangely put it. Maybe you mean it enhances your ability to maintain the site but it certainly doesn't improve anything for the users. Who do you think is going to click on dozens or hundreds of episode links one at a time when the old page did all that for you automatically. How can this retrograde step be considered an "improvement".

I hope this doesn't mean you also going to be soon doing away with the invaluable Reference View because the so-called modern layout is just a terrible mess.

Col: As Alan says, please don't think about removing Reference View. It provides an essential view of the data without extraneous adverts and social media stuff, and with the cast in the defined order that it was in the on-screen credits (as opposed to a subjective "order of eminence of the actor").

People like me who spend probably 95% of the time modifying and adding data, and about 5% looking at the finished data, need more tools to aid the addition of data.

One tool is the Episode Cast page that we're discussing here. Another is a view that sorts data into credit order while it is being submitted - this makes it much easier to see whether you've got gaps or duplicates in credit numbers, especially when adding new cast to a list that has some existing cast, so you need to maintain an consecutive numbering system across both updated and added cast.

Col, ﻿please﻿ consider the needs of the army of unsung heroes - those who add data to IMDB - and don't try to force everyone into a one-size-fits-all user-interface.

And, as I've said before and I'll continue to say, once you have a feature in IMDB, it should stay there forever: no matter how many additional features and data views you add, nothing should ever be removed. That's martin's first rule of software development - add, but never remove features. It's something I feel passionate about :-)

IMDB added some new features and thought that this meant that they could remove the Episode Cast page for each title. We're trying to persuade them that this feature is still used.

The feature that they added is a merged cast page for the whole series, which shows how many times and in which episodes every cast member appears. This might be useful (though I'm not sure how often I personally would use it) but it solves a very different problem to the episode cast page which is a list of every episode, in order, with the episode cast, in order, for each episode.

I use episode cast to look for modifications to the cast of any episode, possibly as a result of an unrelated change or credit vandalism. For the various TV series that I regularly submit to, I:

- open EpCast, select all, copy, paste to text file on my PC- use WinDiff to compare that with a text file from a few days earlier- copy the new text file over the previous one, ready for next time

If I find any differences, I check what's happened. The two most common problems are:

- uncredited background actors added without "(uncredited)" attriibute- every occurrence of an actor deleted or the actor's name changed

On one occasion I found an actor who has appeared for many years under one name, and someone had changed their official name to their full name (addition of middle name and change of surname). Not every case of this is wrong - Samantha Janus and Jessica Stevenson
changed their official acting names to Samantha Womack and Jessica Hynes respectively on marriage - but it flags it for further checking. On another occasion I found a high-profile actor (Jim Norton) who had had all his credits deleted: this showed up because he disappeared from all the before/after text files, and I was able to use this to get IMDB to retrieve his filmography from their backup.

The new feature is a nice to have for the "full cast and crew" section, but as serveral people already proclaimed, no replacement for the "Episodes cast" section at all. I can't see the reason why this section is shut off!? It's a totally different feature. So please bring it back again, I'm using it daily, the new feature doesn't meet my needs at all.

btw. as I just found out, the new "Full cast & Crew" page seems to be messed up as well... There is no sortation at all (at least I couldn't find out any). Except for the sortation by episode appearances, all actors seem to be in random order, not sorted by release year nor alphabetical. Should be fixed as well.

This is a horrible change. It makes it a thousand times more difficult to find information. I am hugely disappointed and majorly upset. I hope IMDB reverses this and returns the episode cast list pages to us. What a terrible thing to take away.

Why is the episode cast list option gone from some shows like Stargate SG-1? I saw a similiar question for another show. Perhaps that outage/problem from earlier this week caused issues like this. Please restore the "episodes cast" info for SG-1. Thanks.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Episode Cast.

The episode cast button was deleted or taken down. Why? If I want to see the every episode of a TV show along with the episodes full cast and a synopsis without having to go back and forth I now can't. Why?

You used to be able to click on the link for each Season of a Series and there were options for Episode List and Episode Cast and the Episode cast is no longer an option. I used it when I had watched a show, saw an actor I recognized but couldn't recall their name or where I had seen them before and I would come to this site, look up that episode and see the cast by episode to see who it was. What happened to this option? I see you can see all cast and crew, but it's no longer by episode.

I'm still upset about this. What would it hurt to keep the episode cast pages? All that work was already done. Why remove it and create this more difficult to use page they have now? I am so disappointed in IMDB. What a bad move to make.

Yes I am frustrated and disappointed too. They need to listen to us and find out the implications of the changes that they impose on us. They should keep submitters (and other people who use the Episode Cast page) on their side. They have gone down a long way in my estimation. I'm very disappointed in them.

The implications are not insurmountable. I'll still carry on submitting data. The lack of the Episode Cast page simply means that I will no longer be able to do a periodic check that I do out of the kindness of my heart which may show up problems (misguided deletion of an actor's credits or changing of his name) that may affect more than just the credits for the titles that I check. I'd gladly have carried on doing this; now I can't. Your loss, IMDB.

It's strange to learn that a feature so valued by many users is considered a tiresome burden by those who maintain it.

It is in essence an unheralded ”episode guide" feature that possibly some users were even unaware of with its somewhat vague understated title of ”Episode Cast". It certainly contains all the elements that one would expect such a guide to have. (Episode number and title, broadcast date, plot and cast, all in chronological order) - perfect!

I certainly considered it a key feature of the site, much like the perfectly presented Reference/Combined pages for Names and Titles respectively.

If using old code is so problematic why couldn't you replicate the functionality with new code and then seamlessly replace it so the users don't know the difference. Better than the ”can't be bothered" attitude that your approach seems to convey.

A page such as you describe is a severe technical challenge for series with thousands of episodes such as "Coronation Street" or "Days of our Lives". A page listing all the thousands of episodes with the credits for each episode would have hundreds of thousands of credits and pages that size tend to cause trouble.

There are ways to incrementally add more data as you scroll down the page but that sort of approach would not necessarily do what you want as well as being an unnecessary overhead on pages that do not need it.

This is not a simple thing that IMDb staff can't be bothered to do, it is something where it is difficult to know what is the right thing to do, let alone to find a technical solution to do whatever has been chosen. With series that are still adding multiple episodes per week, a solution that works today may be overwhelmed by the volume of data in the future.

For shows where the data is already there, shows no longer making new episodes, there is no reason to remove access. The new system takes much more time and is far more demanding of time to find pieces of information. IMDB is often updated by individual members as well. I rely on those episode cast pages and having them removed is unacceptable to me.

Surely then the most obvious answer is to decide on a page limit (for instance 100 episodes) and have a Next Page link at the bottom for the next 100 and so on. Much like the existing User Reviews or the advanced search which have a display limit and next links. That would be better than not having it at all.

That is a lot better than nothing, but what's wrong with continuing as you used to, and creating a single page of all the episodes? Or is there some new limit to the size of dynamic page that your scripts can generate?

It used to work fine. Lots of people used it, judging by the many people who have said that they want it brought back.

IMDB, you've broken it, so you fix it.

Maybe impose a limit on the number of episodes, so as to exclude soaps with many thousands of episodes, but to include a shorter-run series with (for example) up to 10? 20? seasons each of up to 13? 26? 52? episodes per season.

Maybe break down the list into groups of seasons - S1-S10, S11-S20 etc, though that means that people will need to join together the list themselves if they want to compare "all the cast for all the episodes, as of 1 week ago" with "all the cast for all the episodes, as of today" which is how I normally use it so as to look for cast who have disappeared from old episodes because of tinkering and misguided deletion.

A common problem that I have found is that someone decides to delete all the credits that an actor has for various programmes because they think that this is not the same actor who has one credit for something else - and instead of creating a new entry for that one credit and moving it, they delete all the other credits - and they don't even create a new entry for those, they just let them die. This happened to Irish actor Jim Norton a few years ago. My comparison technique showed that he'd disappeared from various programmes that I monitor, and I was able to get IMDB to resurrect them from a backup copy.

But if IMDB don't want their submitters to trap situations like that, then that's fine by me: I'm doing it as a favour, not a duty. If the ability to do it goes, so does my offer to find the problem.

Above all, CONSULT!!!! Discuss what you are proposing to change, BEFORE you remove it. Take your loyal band of submitters into your confidence and don't alienate them.

Keep all existing functionality (even if the code behind the scenes changes), even if you add new functionality which ﻿you﻿ think is a replacement. Only ever add new functionality, never remove.

I have NO CONFIDENCE that IMDB will listen to this. I think they can't be bothered to work with us to find a solution - maybe they are even concerned about loss of face if they backtrack. Shame on them.